Mobility Digest Welcomes Doug Simmons!

The title says it all doesn’t it? After years of asking my Buddy Doug Simmons (C’mon’ you had to ask, he’s the guy behind blownfuze.org) to jump over to our community, he finally gave in! Doug is one of the most knowledgeable people in all our Mobility Community. His contributions at blownfuze.org are tremendous and have helped thousands of people. There is a TON of great information and it all was collected and posted by him. Anyway, I have always thought that we should join together and continue to help our community and build awareness to the awesome capabilities our devices have.  That was yesterday, today, he is part of Mobility Digest! I know some of you might be thinking that Doug has a “tell it how it is” approach to things and can be a little rough around the edges. Well, he is still going to tell it exactly like it is, but with just a few less colorful words. LOL So you can count on Doug’s humor, candidness, willingness to address any issue, and tell you exactly how he feels unrestrained. I am very excited to have my buddy Doug part of our website and I cannot wait to read his articles, reviews, editorials, and whatever else he feels like writing! Don’t tell him cause I don’t want him to get a big head, but I am also a fan! I am also hopeful that I can talk him into doing some podcasts with me. Maybe we could call it the D2 Mobility Digest Podcast? Lot’s of possibilities. In any case, please help me welcome the one, the only, Doug Simmons to Mobility Digest!

Oh wait, there’s more, I also asked Doug to write up a small bio on himself so I could introduce him. The result is a hilarious adventure in all his former exploits! Jump after the break to get to know the man behind blownfuze.org, Doug Simmons a little better!

As a condition of my Mobility tenure I must destroy the mystique and reveal my cards to you all. I am 27 and live in Manhattan. I’m engaged to a take-home-to-Mom girl who, in addition to tolerating my obsession with phones and computers, cooks. Back in the first grade of elementary school, because my handwriting was so bad, I was taught how to type while the other kids played dodge ball. Consequently I got the hang of DOS fast and before long I got the hang of UNIX and Linux, finding an unencrypted customer file of my ISP containing everyone’s password and credit card on my first day of wandering around on my shell account. The owner asked me to knock it off as he hopefully took some security measures. At the time I was also in to making devices to get free payphone calls, getting my TI-82 to generate credit card numbers and modifying scanners to pick up cell phone signals. I would stay up until 5am every night doing stuff like this.

I made my first website in 1993, a diatribe containing my thoughts on my teachers along with a suggestive picture of Anna Nicole Smith. In confidence, I thought, I told my computer teacher about it and gave him the URL. That set off a chain of events that lead to the headmaster persuading my parents, unsuccessfully, to send me to a shrink and that would not be the first time they would discuss me, computers and shrinks with headmasters and or deans. I was expelled in 1998 from high school for making a website containing a realtime feed of the Dow and Nasdaq along with some porn which somehow did not go over well with the headmaster, a reverend, who may or may not have owned stocks. One thing lead to another, including a stint at Skidmore College in upstate New York where I was a rabblerouser for the blue collar workers and was given a summer job by the Service Employees International Union to add student leverage to their contract campaign and negotiations in addition to using my rapport with the workers to persuade them into ratifying an underwhelming contract as the school was prepared to replace them — to offer you something not related to computers.

A quick anecdote for you, jumping back a decade: When I got my first static IP in 1993 and installed Linux on my 386, I’d go into #hack on IRC and hand out shell accounts for my system into the channel. I would then watch these guys log in using ttysnoop to learn how to root a system as if it were a dull Youtube video. This led to my having to format and reinstall a few times but more importantly it led to learning enough about computer security to employ it professionally and on my personal servers. It also led to a call from that owner of my ISP warning me that the FBI called him asking for my info but he refused, asking me again to tone it down a little with giving the accounts out to hackers. Nice guy, a hacker-friendly ISP. Turns out one of these hackers rooted a .gov server from my own machine which is why the feds called. Do I get to take credit for that? I got my first cell phone, the AT&T 8125, maybe four years ago which lead to further things including my making some websites chronicling my Windows Mobile adventures intended for the benefit of others, this time omitting pictures of any kind altogether and so far I haven’t been kicked out of anything. Instead I’ve been invited here to help churn out some content to keep you people coming back for more. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had not been taught how to type.

Doug Simmons